“I’m sorry breakfast is so rushed! It’s not normally this way. We usually luxuriate over breakfast….” Emily said to Jacob and Diana as she shoved a piece of avocado camembert omelet in her mouth.
Our guests’ first morning in Bali unfortunately coincided with Emily’s live lecture. One of her schools requires a one-hour live audio lecture twice a week. Although the Internet at our house is perfectly adequate for 95 percent of our work, it doesn’t sustain audio and video very well. Calls typically drop every 10 to 20 minutes and there are occasional lapses in audio quality.
We can’t take chances with Emily’s lectures, so we head to Ubud where Emily lectures in the one Internet cafe with a special, enterprise grade connection. We had to leave the house by 8:00.
In the mix of Nengah running a few minutes late making breakfast and Emily’s strong value on punctuality, Jacob and Diana were a little more on the clock than we would like our guests to experience during any compound breakfast, let alone their first. I guess having just come from LA and not yet having unwound helped. They’re still used to living by the clock and eating on the run.
I always enjoy taking guests into Ubud for the first time. Diana had never been and the whole drive was filled with oohs and awes. There’s nothing quite like parking half a block down from a palace and a lotus temple and saying, “Welcome to Ubud!”
While Emily blah blahed about cultural differences and gender norms with people in Missouri, Ohio, California and Oklahoma, I walked a few blocks of Ubud with Jacob and Diana.
Jacob amazed me with his highly detailed memory. He immediately knew where he was and how to get around town despite the six year gap since he was last here. Most impressively, he was immediately able to point out the spa where we went for massages.
Not surprisingly, while Emily and I worked at Casa Luna, – one of our favorite Ubud restaurants – Jacob and Diana got a treatment known as a mandi lurlur. It starts with a one hour massage, after which comes a body scrub of yogurt and local spices (largely turmeric) used to exfoliate the entire body. The treatment culminates with a rose petal filled bath during which the freshly exfoliated enjoy ginger tea and cookies.
Jacob and Diana have made a day of wandering Ubud and enjoying its delights as Diana excitedly seeks to capture its every angle and aspect with her camera.
While Jacob and Diana dated 2.5 times longer than Emily and I did, and have been married a year longer than us, somehow we feel like the old married couple. While Jacob and Diana walk around town enjoying the honeymoon they never took, Emily and I sat at Casa Luna and discussed Internet speed, curriculum and my excitement about getting done with my articles early.
However, what’s exciting to us is figuring out what to do with our guests during their somewhat brief stay. Jacob and Diana have only nine days here. In many places, that would be a nice amount of time. And they’ll get a lot out of that time. But for some inexplicable reason, there’s really never enough time in Bali.
So, we’re going to help them extract the essence of Bali in nine days or less. This isn’t for the faint of heart or the inexperienced. I like to think I’m neither of those things. More importantly, I feel if there was ever real money and a promising career in being a Bali tour guide, it would be my calling. I love to show people Bali and take immense pleasure in doing so.
I started with escorting them to the Ubud Palace, the adjacent royal temple and the subsequent Lotus Temple before pulling into Casa Luna to work. Jacob very smartly kept the ball rolling with his choice in spa treatment – in one fell swoop they got both Balinese massage and ancient Javanese beauty and bathing rituals done. Excellent experiential efficiency.
Last I checked they were headed down the street to the Monkey Forest. You really haven’t fully experienced Ubud until you’ve had a monkey mildly annoyed at you for not bringing bananas. Jacob and Diana are on the program.
Our guests have also managed to break up our otherwise snoozy workday by coming back to Casa Luna for a lunch that was as long, leisurely and fun enough to make up for the horrifically rushed breakfast.
For Emily and me, it’s been fantastic to be reunited with people we love so much and to connect again with home – this time with peers.
I don’t know if it’s because of the blog or the fact that time never feels like it’s passed when I see the people closest to me – but I had sort of forgotten that we had catching up to do. Emily and I have had so many experiences since we last saw them.
Discussing some of the places we’ve been, our impressions and even comparing and contrasting concepts from other places with Bali has made for interesting discussion. For example, although both India and Bali have very low per capita incomes – there’s a phenomenal difference in the way people live and their standards of living. Much of this – as I’ve discussed previously – has to do with Balinese ownership of family land and homes. The Balinese can be cash poor, but they’re almost never destitute.
Emily and I have had endless hours and opportunities to discuss ideas and perceptions amongst ourselves. It’s so fun and refreshing to discuss them with friends – especially such engaging ones.
“So, you guys talk….all the time….about nothing that important…. Why? What is that to you?” my friend Alex asked Jacob and I on the flight from Singapore to Bali in 2005. Jacob and I simultaneously paused and responded in almost the same words and tone, “That’s what we do – we talk about stuff….”
And we still do.
Sure, we’re not going to solve the problems of Indian street children or figure out why Balinese dogs won’t get out of the road over coconut milk curries and fried tempeh, but somewhere in the mix, we accomplish what matters most – connection. At our lunch table there was enough warmth and love to feed all of India.
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